How to turn loss into liberation? When does the shock of
absence begin to open to new freedom? It starts to happen when the gaping hole
of grief into which floats the endless list of losses finally exhausts itself.
The day arrives when you wake up and your chest does not feel crushed by a sun
that brings the memory of everything that no longer is, and instead you want to
drink some tea. When you start to want to read again, maybe just poetry here
and there, but you are surprised to feel yourself laugh again. You feel the
scar tissue building up in your chest allowing you to breath again. It will
never completely go away, the chest pain, but there is a growing knowledge that
the pain you have endured is what makes you a person of worth.
It could be for your grown manchild who hasn’t ever had his
heart broken, but you know when that happens, he will come to you, and you will
know how to hold a space for him to feel his pain instead of repressing it. It
means that when your own first love calls you to exorcise his deep hurt about
his young girlfriend, you will know exactly what to say. Because the pain that
you felt 30 years ago is still in your heart. It’s right there, ready to serve
you by giving you the right words to help a man you once wanted to marry be
kind to someone he now wants to marry. It’s there for you when your old love’s
young girlfriend, whose plight you know all too well, needs someone who will
understand the exact nature her pain. You know that dream, and that loss.
The pain that has been refreshed by your own recent losses
tunes you up for these conversations, enables you to say, “Take the high road,”
and “This too will pass.” Each time you convince someone else that everything will
be all right, you convince yourself. Then you start to feel what it means to be
free.
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